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I have been looking at every picture, every build I can find. I see all kinds of metal nuts, bolts & pans for charcoal baskets going into cookers being built. The safest has to be aluminum, SS & carbon steel. I've even see some brass from lamp parts. Is Zinc Plated & Electro Galvanized really that bad? Even if you had them in a "Burn out", wouldn't that remove most if the danger of toxic chemicals being released?
What's you honest opinion? Everone's got one.
That's what I've heard.

No means an expert on this, but there seems to be two sides to this debate. Some will never use galvanized, and some do not care if they use it or not. Now, the ones who do not care seem to fall into two sides as well! Some believe(maybe rightly so) that the toxic effect of the galvanized happens at too high a temperature to be a concern, or that there would be minimal exposure even if there was toxicity. Meaning, that the temperature needed for toxicity is not reached in the drum smokers. As for me, not being a chemist or physicist, I do not really know the truth on the subject. But I think living in NJ/NYC area for most of my earlier life before I made it to TEXAS was FAR more TOXIC to my being than what a few screws will kick off!

I just give my zinc plated hardware a quick bath in muratic acid. A couple of minutes is all it takes and you're down to bare metal. You can tell because a day later rust will start to develop on the hardware if it's not greased up.

Muratic acid is also great for cleaning dart barrels (I'm a dart tosser when not hanging out by the UDS).

Oh, and around here, stainless is 3 to 4 times more expensive than zinc plated, we're talking $30 instead of $10, so I use 10 cents worth of muratic acid and 5 minutes of my time on the zinc stuff. It's all gonna get greasy and lubed in the cooker anyways.

You can also soak your zinc plated hardware in toilet bowl cleaner for a couple of hours. It will take the plating off, then you just rinse it real well and you are good. Just like with the muriatic acid suggestion above rust will form in a day or so so you know it worked.